Home > NYTimes' Myopic Take on Wisconsin: All About 'Stunning Amount' Spent by 'Corporate Interests and Billionaires'

NYTimes' Myopic Take on Wisconsin: All About 'Stunning Amount' Spent by 'Corporate Interests and Billionaires'

By

Clay Waters

June 8, 2012 - 12:54pm

Wisconsin's reforming Republican Gov. Scott Walker easily turned back
a recall attempt by labor activists angry at him for ending collective
bargaining for public service unions. But the New York Times, pushing
its own agenda, would prefer the story to be about the "stunning amount"
of money in politics. The Times and other media have obsessed over the
big spending by Walker supporters, which is rather galling considering
that it was the left responsible for holding this election in the first
place. Also absent: credit to Tea Party activists.

The
last governor’s race in Wisconsin, in 2010, broke spending records for
such campaigns in the state, with more than $37 million expended by the
candidates and outside groups. Two years later, in a recall election set
for Tuesday, the candidates -- Gov. Scott Walker and Mayor Tom Barrett
of Milwaukee -- are the same, but the money has ballooned to an
estimated $60 million.

That is an especially stunning amount for a race that has been only months in the making.

Even
before Election Day on Tuesday, some groups, including the Wisconsin
Democracy Campaign, an independent organization that tracks political
money in the state and came up with the latest estimate, were calling on
lawmakers to overhaul the state’s financial reporting requirements.

Among the biggest problems,
according to Mike McCabe, executive director of the organization, is a
lack of transparency about outside groups that are buying ads -- a
collection that makes up about $30 million of the spending in this
campaign.

Mr. Barrett, a Democrat who
campaigned in Milwaukee on Friday with former President Bill Clinton,
has raised about $4 million, his campaign reports show. He said this
week that he would support calling a special session of the Legislature
to work on finance overhauls.

Mr.
Walker, a Republican who on Friday visited suburban Milwaukee with Gov.
Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina, has raised more than $30 million since
the start of 2011, two thirds of that just in the last five months, his
reports say.

Mr.
Walker’s profile clearly has already risen. His list of big donors in
the recall election includes many outside Wisconsin, and prominent
givers to other conservative causes: among them, Foster Friess, the
Wyoming man who donated to a “super PAC” that kept Rick Santorum’s
presidential hopes afloat; Bob J. Perry, who helped pay for the Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth ads against John Kerry eight years ago; and
Trevor Rees-Jones, the chairman of a Texas oil and gas company.

....

His approach, it seems, has always been the same. He is uncompromising, polarizing, headline-grabbing, austere. In
Milwaukee County, he once proposed that the government might want to
consider abolishing itself. There, he also pushed for privatizing
cleaning and food service workers. He also pressed for changes to
pension and health care contributions and workers’ hours -- a familiar
theme when he became governor.

Michael Shear also found "corporate interests and billionaires" who gave to Walker in his story on the same page, "Looking at Recall Vote As Drawing Lines for All – Taking Note of Strategy, and the Price Tag[3]."
Shear contrasted Romney's money with a nonpartisan source – Obama's
campaign advisor David Axelrod. Never mind that the Obama campaign has
been bragging about how much money they would raise for the 2012
campaign, and that those predictions have been repeated without
criticism in the Times.

Although Mr.
Obama kept his distance from the state in the final weeks of the
union-led recall effort, his party, his campaign team and his labor
allies exerted an enormous joint effort there that proved to be
mismatched for the organized and well-financed Republican apparatus.

The corporate interests and billionaires who are pouring cash into Mr. Romney’s “super PACs” gave millions to Mr. Walker.
To combat those resources, Mr. Obama’s campaign, aided by union allies,
constructed a turnout machine in Wisconsin that they said will be a
model for other battleground states.

....

The
biggest contributors to Mr. Walker included investments from Bob Perry,
the Houston homebuilder whose family has spent more than $8 million
this election cycle; Foster Friess, the entrepreneur who was the leading
benefactor to Rick Santorum; Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who
provided millions to Newt Gingrich; and Charles and David Koch, whose
group helped finance millions in advertisements.

“The
fact that you’ve got a handful of self-interested billionaires who are
trying to leverage their money across the country,” said David Axelrod,
Mr. Obama’s senior campaign strategist, said in an interview. “Does that
concern me? Of course that concerns me.”

State
law allowed unlimited contributions to Mr. Walker’s campaign, mirroring
the free flow of money into presidential campaigns via federal super
PACs that were allowed under the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United
decision.

....

But
Mr. Axelrod said he was confident that the president’s campaign would
be in a better position to respond aggressively than was Mr. Barrett.

“We
start off in a better place, and we’re not going to get outspent eight
to one,” Mr. Axelrod said. “We are not going to have just a month to run
our campaign. You cannot draw that parallel here. We’re in an entirely
different situation.”

Actually total spending in the race was not
"eight to one" but closer to 2.5 to one through May 21, according to the
Times' own figures, showing pro-Walker spending of $45.6 million and
pro-Barrett spending of $17.9 million (8-1 may refer to spending by the
campaigns themselves).

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